Archive

Every post, going back to 2005.

2026

Jul 1 On Returning

Note: The blog had no new posts from 2013 to 2025.

2012

Sep 12 At Responsys
Sep 4 Back in the Bay Area
Jul 26 Omnivark’s Division of Labor
Jul 26 Omnivark’s Time and Place
Jun 21 Stylistic Signals
Jun 13 Following the Elites
May 29 McMeasure It
May 7 Why Omnivark?
Apr 10 The Fastest Human in History
Apr 1 New Name, Look, and Features
Mar 29 Intelligent Cross-Sell: The CNET Years
Jan 24 Meet Omnivark

2011

Dec 1 Just Follow the Signs...
Nov 10 Nuclear Weapons and Murphy’s Law
Oct 17 “One Good Turn” by Witold Rybczynski
Oct 6 Changing Gears
Oct 6 CNET Intelligent Cross-Sell @ RichRelevance
Sep 25 My Perestroika
Sep 17 Review: “A Crack in the Edge of the World” by Simon Winchester
Sep 11 Friends and Strangers
Aug 7 The Long and Short of Average Sentence Length
Jul 31 Citizen U.S.A.
Jul 23 The Use and Abuse of the Em Dash
Jun 26 Revew: “Sum” by David Eagleman
Jun 12 Dreaming FIDS
Jun 5 Edward Tufte’s ET Modern Gallery
May 28 Correlation Exploration
May 22 Counterintuitive College Rankings
May 15 Review: “The Yugo” by Jason Vuic
May 8 How Pizza Hut Got Its Name
Apr 25 A Lot from a Little: Otomata and Generative Music
Apr 17 Review: “The Mom & Pop Store” by Robert Spector
Apr 2 Misguidedly Different
Mar 24 Review: “Genghis Khan, Modern Man” by Jack Weatherford
Mar 17 Salesforce.com Competitive Mischief
Mar 8 Review: “Behind the Cloud” by Marc Benioff
Feb 28 Earmarks Away
Feb 22 Review: “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by Kamkwamba and Mealer
Feb 15 Enjoy Every Sandwich (Watson on Jeopardy)
Feb 6 Pig 05049
Jan 23 Let There Not Be Light
Jan 17 Decision-Making in the American Revolutionary War
Jan 11 Review: “Washington’s Crossing” by David Hackett Fischer
Jan 2 Banksy Breaks the Frame

2010

Dec 19 “Re-projection: Hoosac” by Tobias Putrih
Dec 13 Review: “Illumination in the Flatwoods” by Joe Hutto
Dec 5 States with Places with English Names (or, How Much More English is New England?)
Nov 21 John Adams Puts John Cage In Context
Nov 14 Ham the Astrochimp
Nov 7 Review: “Wooden Boats” by Michael Ruhlman
Nov 1 Waiting for Superman
Oct 24 Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings at MASS MoCA
Oct 18 Wildlife Documentaries Exposed?
Oct 12 Does the Future of Testing Need Tests?
Oct 3 Review: “The Good Soldiers” by David Finkel
Sep 28 The Ultimate Niche Business
Sep 26 Warren Buffett versus The Efficient Market Hypothesis
Sep 23 America the Start-Up
Sep 12 Grading Teachers Based on Their Students’ Test Scores
Aug 22 The Fates of Wristwatches and Email
Aug 8 Lessons from “Million-Dollar Murray”
Aug 1 Two By David Grann
Jul 18 The Six Million Dollar Turkey?
Jul 11 The Wisdom of Water Towers
Jun 27 Charter Cities
Jun 21 Review: “The Size of Thoughts” by Nicholson Baker
Jun 13 “Square with Four Circles”: More Interesting Than It Sounds ; )
Jun 6 Give Data, Get Stuff: Always Present and Evolving
May 31 Congratulations, West Hartford!
May 16 Review: “Dirt” by David Montgomery
May 9 Engage and Persuade: San Francisco Cabbie Edition
May 4 Owl Pellets Again?
Apr 24 The Owl Pellet Economy
Apr 17 Privacy Noise
Apr 10 Review: “The Quants” by Scott Patterson
Apr 4 iPad: It’s Not Your Father’s Apple II
Mar 29 Common Sense versus the Uncommon Situation
Mar 22 Worm Grunting
Mar 14 Review: “A Sense of the World” by Jason Roberts
Mar 7 Copy and Paste Provenance
Feb 28 Microattention for Secondary Screens
Feb 20 Review: “The Fourth Star” by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe
Feb 15 When Reporters Don’t Want to Hear It
Feb 6 Review: “A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage
Jan 30 The Power of the Portfolio: VCs and Entrepreneurs
Jan 24 Coding for an Audience
Jan 16 Review: “Coders at Work” by Peter Seibel
Jan 10 Recovering Energy from Shock Absorbers (Levant Power)
Jan 5 Review: “Invictus” by John Carlin

2009

Dec 19 Review: “Fargo Rock City” by Chuck Klosterman
Dec 13 “The Bloomberg of Wind” (Wind Pole Ventures)
Dec 5 Full-Circle Guitar
Nov 23 A Building to Behold: Yale’s Beinecke Library
Nov 15 Review: “Blind Man’s Bluff” by Sontag and Drew
Nov 7 Popularity of Words for Numbers
Oct 29 Onomatopoeia for Books (“The Twitter Book” by O’Reilly and Milstein)
Oct 22 Review: “Chasing the Flame” by Samantha Power
Oct 18 Negative-Space Pumpkin
Oct 14 Our Greatest Animal Menace?
Oct 10 Review: “The Origin of Wealth” by Eric Beinhocker
Oct 4 A Quick Spin with Google App Engine
Oct 2 The Arbitrary Precision of a Close Finish
Sep 29 Does the Future of TV Have Two Screens?
Sep 24 Woe is GDP
Sep 19 21st Century Family Photo
Sep 16 On Twitter
Sep 12 The Good Old Days, Inflation-Adjusted
Sep 6 Review: “The Great Siege: Malta 1565” by Ernle Bradford
Aug 29 1919 Penny
Aug 24 Proactive Safety from Flight Data
Aug 16 Weird, Wonderful Comerç 24
Aug 10 Penetration Confusion
Jul 25 Ondák’s “Measuring the Universe”
Jul 11 Too Many Italian Restaurants?
Jun 30 Data-Mining 1.6 Million Putts for Irrationality
Jun 14 New York City’s High Line
Jun 10 Trademarkery
May 26 Meaningful Numbers on Commuter-Airline Safety
May 17 Spread the Word: “Affordance”
Apr 25 Review: “100 Years of Change” by George Friedman
Apr 12 Truth from the Technical Trenches
Mar 28 Hyundai Assurance
Mar 22 Managing by Measuring the Right Things
Mar 15 “Stop Talking and Let the Students Learn to Learn”
Mar 8 Bubble Fuel
Mar 4 Geeks Bearing Formulas
Feb 21 When Dishwasher Displays Attack
Feb 15 Making User Ratings Add Up
Feb 8 From Newspapers to News
Jan 31 Theory and Practice of “Customer Focused”
Jan 24 On Colophons
Jan 18 Engagement with Learning at MIT
Jan 15 What Can You Learn from 40 Million Resumes?
Jan 10 Turbulence Ball
Jan 4 How Big is a Trillion?
Jan 4 The Risky Business of “Value at Risk”

2008

Dec 20 Understanding 0.02 Parts per Billion
Dec 14 Tidal Waves Are Not Tidal
Dec 6 Review: “Super Crunchers” by Ian Ayres
Dec 1 Art Auctions’ Self-Serving Numbers
Nov 22 SVD for You and Me
Nov 15 Water-Based Data Centers
Nov 9 Review: “Gaming the Vote” by William Poundstone
Oct 31 October Surprise or Ambiguous Reference?
Oct 26 Different Ways to Do Percentage Differences
Oct 20 The Wandering Albatross
Oct 12 The Evolution of Children’s TV
Sep 30 Points, Percentages, and Stock-Market Plunges
Sep 20 Megapixels Begone (Comparative Metrics That Won’t Go Away)
Sep 6 Inverse Out-of-Office Message
Sep 1 The Metrics of High Gas Prices
Aug 24 How Not To Do Customer Service
Aug 7 Enlightening about Lightning
Jul 20 Review: “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely
Jul 13 Social Norms versus Market Norms in Daycare
Jun 29 What Is a Vegetable?
Jun 22 The State Motto Grotto
Jun 14 John Gruber’s “Daring Fireball”
May 31 Zappos Makes It Pay to Quit
May 18 Intelligent Cross-Sell at Office Depot
May 11 Kindle and Amazon.com’s Big Thinking
May 4 The Eric Carle Museum
Apr 23 Cameras That Make Us Better
Apr 15 When Stupid Isn’t: Product People Behind the Scenes
Apr 10 Bill James Explains
Apr 6 A Tale of Two On/Off Switches
Mar 30 Rhetoric and the Visual Word
Mar 17 Eastward
Mar 13 Correcting for the Human Factor in Movie Ratings
Feb 23 Errant Error Explanations
Feb 22 Extracting That First Piece of Cake
Feb 9 Airport Usability: Where Is My Baggage?
Jan 5 “Is Disdain for Céline Dion Innate or Learned?”

2007

Dec 28 Review: “The Genius of America” by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes
Dec 15 Mortenson and Relin’s “Three Cups of Tea”
Dec 10 ExactChoice Epilogue: New CNET Recommenders
Dec 8 XTC’s Go 2: “This is a Record Cover.”
Nov 27 The Unmeasured Medium of Meetings
Nov 3 Vampires versus Math
Oct 23 Review: “How Computer Games Help Children Learn” by David Williamson Shaffer
Oct 13 Customer Service Everywhere
Sep 30 Analytics That Explain Themselves
Sep 7 How to Hold a HiPPO
Aug 6 Highway Exit Numbers: When Simple Was Too Simple
Jul 21 Let It Roll, Baby, Roll
Jul 10 The Pleasant Mystery of the Perfect Cut
Jun 30 Walter Murch and the Long View of Film
Jun 22 Bring on the New Magic
Jun 13 Yield Management for Metered Street Parking
May 28 Issues, Character, and Tuchman’s “The March of Folly”
May 15 Outstanding in the Field
May 10 The New York Times, Nielsen, and a Missing Margin of Error
May 1 Is Predicting Hit Songs Futile?
Apr 26 Do You Like What You Like Because You Like What I Like?
Apr 15 The Joshua Bell Experiment
Apr 1 Trojan Goldfish
Mar 17 Misspelling for Profit
Mar 5 A Reminder from Buffalo, NY, Circa 1886
Feb 22 How Big Was That Squid?
Feb 20 Why No Single-Letter Domains?
Feb 6 E Ink: A Tale of Two Applications
Jan 29 Throwing the Book at Sony’s Reader
Jan 22 CMU’s TrafficSTATS
Jan 8 Air Sickness Bag Collecting

2006

Dec 18 Private Prediction Markets for Companies
Dec 11 Tragedy and the Kindness of Strangers
Dec 4 Bassmaster and the American Dream
Dec 1 Stock-Price Milestones
Nov 19 In Praise of the Apple Corer
Nov 11 Election Night 2006 Graphics
Nov 4 One Person, One Vote, Many Voting Systems
Oct 29 loudQUIETloud: A film about the Pixies
Oct 23 The Netflix Prize: Research Project as Product
Oct 8 Review: “Organic, Inc.” by Samuel Fromartz
Sep 27 Disney Gadget Magnetism
Sep 13 Alaska’s Width
Sep 11 CarMax Does Data Better
Sep 4 Follow Up: Harvesting Power from Human Motion at Large Scale
Aug 29 Piracy in Peru
Aug 21 David Foster Wallace Serves It Up
Aug 13 Wine Ratings: Drunk on Numbers?
Aug 8 Vanity Sizing
Jul 30 Old School Mash-Ups
Jul 30 Sign Usability: San Francisco Does the Right Thing
Jul 25 Why You Will Probably Outlive the Average Life Expectancy
Jul 17 George Harrison, Pirate?
Jul 17 Small Town Volunteerism
Jun 25 By the Numbers: Komar and Melamid’s “People’s Choice”
Jun 18 Data Visualization as Art
Jun 11 Unexpected Numbers from the Economist’s “2006 Pocket World in Figures”
Jun 4 Latitude with Attitude
May 28 Wal-Mart and Economies of Density
May 22 GM Gets Shifty With Numbers
May 14 Rosum: A Down-to-Earth Version of GPS
May 11 Dave Ibsen, Webby Winner
May 10 Ormerod’s “Why Most Things Fail” and Schelling’s Segregation Models
May 5 Back to the Land: Earthbound Farm Tours
Apr 30 When is a Nutshell not a Nutshell?
Apr 20 Hearing Glasses
Apr 17 Where the U.S. Poverty-Rate Metric Came From
Apr 12 Genetic Data’s Hammer and Nails
Apr 9 Windows XP and Tivo: Don’t Confirm When You Can Undo
Apr 3 News vs. Blogs: Mobile Distinctions
Mar 29 Spoofing Your Way to the Next Big Thing
Mar 27 When Counts and Percents Contradict
Mar 21 Starbucks and the Meaning of Coffee
Mar 12 Prosper and Zopa Bring the Business Model
Mar 4 How Not To Use Numbers: High Schools Withhold Student Rankings
Feb 26 The iPod Generation
Feb 21 Synthetic Pets and the Power of Precedent
Feb 16 Hefty OneZip: A Usability Puzzle
Feb 12 Intelligent Cross-Sell
Jan 31 Pandora and Last.fm: Nature vs. Nurture in Music Recommenders
Jan 22 User Agreements: Stop the Madness
Jan 20 BusinessWeek Does the Math
Jan 18 Review: “All the Shah’s Men” by Steven Kinzer
Jan 15 Interstellar Magnetic Slinky
Jan 13 Airborne: Neither Vitamin nor Aspirin
Jan 5 Product Name-O-Rama
Jan 1 Microwave Oven Usability

2005

Dec 13 “Head First” and Zig-Zag Learning
Dec 4 “Don’t Trash California” Ad
Nov 29 Opportunities in Image Search
Nov 23 Thinking About Eating
Nov 21 Where is the Pets.com of Web 2.0?
Nov 21 Windows in the Rearview Mirror
Nov 17 By and Largely Smaller
Nov 15 The Flaw of Averages
Nov 13 Follow the Money with “Where Is George”
Nov 7 Frequent Flyer Cards Keep Airlines Alive
Nov 7 Professional-Services Firms as Sales Channels
Nov 4 Anchor from the Eye of Destruction
Nov 2 Richard Branson, Analyst
Oct 30 Livening Up Asexual-Fungus Research
Oct 30 When the Means Become the Ends
Oct 26 Word of the Day: Deroach
Oct 24 War on the Wane?
Oct 23 Costing Out Email’s Manifest Destiny
Oct 19 “The Search” by John Batelle
Oct 13 Bubble Calibration Instrument
Oct 12 Naming In Need Of Taming
Oct 11 Weather Entrepreneurs
Oct 10 My Freakonomics Encounter
Oct 7 Attention Trust, Clickstreams, and the Meaning-Mining Problem
Sep 29 Rogue Bloggers and Double Agents
Sep 28 Google Playing Clickstream Catch-Up
Sep 25 Harvesting Power from Human Motion: Small to Large Scale?
Sep 20 Companies as Products
Sep 20 Consumer Apps for Real-Time Biofeedback
Sep 19 High-Definition Lettuce
Sep 19 It’s Like Golf But with a Shotgun
Sep 18 CNET Content Solutions (and Me)
Sep 18 ExactChoice: The Two-Minute History
Sep 18 Personify Retrospective
Sep 18 SRI iVALS Program
Sep 18 SRI Media Futures Program
Sep 17 Catching Up